Don't be a hedgehog

I'm still listening/reading Thinking Fast and Slow. I probably need to go back and read the book more slowly because almost every aspect of how we think gets tackled.  I just finished the section on the Illusion of Pundits in which the validity of so-called experts (political, economic, etc.) comes under scrutiny. They are not as expert as they think they are or we want to believe. In a study of pundits, Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, found out that:

"experts resisted admitting that they had been wrong, and when they were compelled to admit error, they had a large collection of excuses: they had been wrong only in their timing, an unforeseeable event had intervened, or they had been wrong but for the right reasons. Experts are just human in the end. They are dazzled by their own brilliance and hate to be wrong. Experts are led astray not by what they believe, but by how they think, says Tetlock. He uses the terminology from Isaiah Berlin's essay on Tolstoy, "The Hedgehog and the Fox." Hedgehogs "know one big thing" and have a theory about the world; they account for particular events within a coherent framework, bristle with impatience toward those who don't see things their way, and are confident in their forecasts. They are also especially reluctant to admit error. For hedgehogs, a failed prediction is almost always "off only on timing" or "very nearly right." They are opinionated and clear; which is exactly what television producers love to see on programs. Two hedgehogs on different sides of an issue, each attacking the other idiotic ideas of the adversary, make for a good show."

We not be experts in politics or economics, but we can get quite prickly at times. But in my opinion Christians attacking one another on social media is not a good show. Moral of the story: Don't bristle with impatience toward those who don't see things your way. Don't be a hedgehog.¹

Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011, pp. 218-220.
Photo credit: By Lars Karlsson (Keqs) [CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], from Wikimedia Commons
1. For any hedgehogs reading this post, this is just an analogy, so don't take it personally. You're fine. We aren't. Stay prickly for your own safety.